St. Albert Transit is buying 13 more diesel buses.
Nova Bus, the Saint-Eustache, Quebec manufacturer owned by the Volvo Group, announced Thursday it has been selected to supply 13 40-foot diesel buses as part of St. Albert's fleet renewal and expansion program.
The order builds on 19 vehicles already delivered, bringing the total Nova Bus fleet integrated into the network since 2025 to 32.
What was and wasn't announced
Nova Bus says the order supports growing ridership in the Edmonton metropolitan area, offering what it calls a solution combining performance and durability.
"We thank St. Albert Transit for its continued trust in Nova Bus," said Nova Bus president Paul Le Houillier. "This new contract reflects the strength of our partnership and our commitment to delivering reliable vehicles that meet the operational needs of public transit systems across Canada."
The announcement does not include a contract value, a delivery timeline, or which routes the buses will serve.
St. Albert went electric first, in 2017
The city was ahead of everyone on this.
St. Albert Transit put Canada's first municipally owned long-range electric buses into service in 2017 and 2018. Seven of them, deployed on both local and commuter routes.
They cost close to $1 million each. The city received $2.1 million in combined provincial and federal funding toward them. They seat 32 rather than the 37 on a standard bus, and residents were told to expect quieter operation.
By 2024, the assessment had changed. Councillor Sheena Hughes described the city as facing a serious predicament, saying the electric buses had not lived up to expectations.
Neither the city nor Nova Bus addressed the electric fleet in Thursday's announcement.
Everyone was watching St. Albert
Being first meant being the test case.
When a city of 70,000 buys Canada's first municipally owned long-range electric buses, transit agencies across the country pay attention, because the numbers that come out of a real fleet in a real winter are worth more than any manufacturer's spec sheet. Cold reduces battery range. Alberta has cold. St. Albert was the answer to a question a lot of transit planners had.
Nine years later, the city's own council was calling it a serious predicament.
That result travels too. Every agency weighing an electric order looks at what happened in the places that went first, and St. Albert is one of the places that went first.
Which is what makes this order more interesting than 13 buses would normally be. The city that proved it could be done is the city now buying diesel, and the reasons haven't been made public.
The diesel question
There's a wrinkle worth flagging.
In 2024, St. Albert council was told Nova Bus had decided to stop producing diesel buses. Councillor Wes Brodhead, who represents St. Albert on the board of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said at the time the city would need to decide its direction or wait to see what higher levels of government or the market decided.
"The whole industry is going to zero emission," Brodhead said then. "Whether we do it voluntarily or we get told to do it, we're going to be dealing with zero-emission vehicles here sooner or later."
Two years later, Nova Bus is supplying St. Albert with 13 diesel buses. What changed hasn't been explained by either party.
Nova Bus's own announcement carries a line that reads like an answer to a question nobody asked in it: public transit buses, regardless of propulsion technology, remain an essential solution for sustainable mobility by helping reduce the number of personal vehicles on the road.
Who Nova Bus is
Nova Bus has more than 30 years in the business and says every bus it makes is 100 per cent designed and manufactured in Canada.
It's a Volvo Group subsidiary and supplies transit agencies across the country, including Calgary Transit and BC Transit.
What we've asked
Three things aren't public: what the 13 buses cost, when they arrive, and whether St. Albert intends to buy any more electric buses.
We've asked the City of St. Albert and will update this article.
Sources
St. Albert Transit Reaffirms Its Confidence in Nova Bus for Fleet Modernization — Nova Bus, August 13, 2026
Electric Buses — City of St. Albert
Council comments from Wes Brodhead and Sheena Hughes as reported by the St. Albert Gazette, 2024
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